‘I’ve certainly got a lot of new ideas to try out, sir,’ Mulberry beamed.
New ideas? Arbulaster thought. That sounds like the last thing the regiment needs.
‘New ideas?’ Arbulaster said. ‘That sounds like just the thing the regiment needs.’
‘I’m so pleased to hear it,’ Mulberry replied and Arbulaster saw his hand come out from behind his back and begin to reach across.
‘Dismissed!’ Arbulaster snapped and Mulberry jumped to attention, saluted and strode out. The adjutant closed the door behind him. ‘Shall I send in the last one, colonel?’
Arbulaster looked down at the sole docket left upon his desk.
‘Hold on a moment.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Arbulaster picked the docket up and flipped it open to the service record. Stanhope, R. B. de R. H. 639.M41, a second lieutenant with the newly raised Brimlock 33rd assigned to the Ellinor Crusade: 642, promoted to first lieutenant after the assault on Ketta and awarded the Bronze Halo; 643, awarded the Abject Hope in the storming of the fortress-city of Hanzi; 645, promoted to brevet captain during the action on Dahar; 646, awarded the Ellinor Star for the counter-boarding of an enemy cruiser in the Bukhat system; 649, promoted to major and given command of a whole regiment of margo auxilia, the 1201st. Then the Brimlock Crown, the Victory Laurel, the Bellum Opus, induction into the Order of St. Marguerite.
But, after the 1201st was dissolved after Ghilzai, nothing. Nothing for the last four years except for a litany of transfers. Stanhope had been bounced from one regiment to another, each colonel moving him on as soon as they could.
There were no citations, no reprimands, no rationale, nothing on the docket at least, but Arbulaster had heard the stories. Dereliction. Desertion. Insubordination. Intoxication. Assault. He had wondered why an officer with such a reputation had not been despatched by a commissar or a provost. That was one favour which his contacts at Command had been able to grant. A brief reply had come back: someone watched over him.
Stanhope, whether he knew it or not, had a guardian angel. And Arbulaster had not survived as long as he had by defying the angels. He didn’t have to like it though.
Arbulaster composed himself. ‘Very well, Parker.’
The adjutant nodded, showed Major Stanhope in and then exited discreetly. Stanhope stood at attention in front of the desk.
‘Stand easy,’ Arbulaster ordered automatically.
So this was the wretched Major Stanhope. Arbulaster was not surprised and not impressed. He had made the effort to shave on this occasion, but his cheeks were hollow and his reddened eyes sunk deep in their sockets. His uniform had obviously been fitted in more fortunate times and now it sagged slightly where a once-powerful frame had wasted away.
Arbulaster let the silence linger. He had found no quicker, more effective means of gaining the measure of a transferring officer: whether they shifted a fraction with discomfort; whether they, Emperor save ’em, actually started talking unbidden. Stanhope did neither, he merely stood easy, hands clasped loosely behind his back, his eyes focused on a point slightly above the colonel’s head. No, Arbulaster realised, they were not focused, they were glazed.
‘Damn it, man, are you on it now?’
‘On what, colonel?’
Arbulaster could not bear to spend any more time with this man. He cut to the chase.
‘I don’t care who you were, major. I don’t care what you’ve done. You are an officer under my command and that means you have two gods: the Emperor and myself. But unlike Him, I am a benevolent god. There are a hundred reasons why I might shoot you, but there’s only one for which I’ll damn you and that is if you do anything that results in the disruption of my regiment. You understand me?’
‘Yes, colonel.’
‘We have a vacant company command for you,’ Arbulaster said with reluctance. ‘Lieutenant Carson has been managing the shop there for the last few years. Done a damn fine job of it too. They’re good men. They don’t need much officering. Should suit you well as you ain’t much of an officer.’
Stanhope did not respond despite the slur and so Arbulaster finished him off.
‘One last thing, Stanhope. If you would be so kind as to arrange matters to ensure that, after today, I never see you, never hear from you, never read your name, and am troubled by as few reminders of your existence as possible, I would consider it a personal favour.’
‘I’ll try my best, colonel.’
‘See that you do.’
Arbulaster found that Major Stanhope was as good as his word. He absented himself from the colonel’s world and the colonel returned the favour by pointedly omitting to endorse the transfer orders that would allow him to take command. Arbulaster had enough to fill his time as he swung the 11th’s last campaign into gear.
The governor of Voor, despite their earlier ‘miscommunications’, proved helpful enough and, as the Brydon emerged from the warp, transmitted all the terrain information they had. The rok had landed on one of Voor’s secondary continents, covered with forest or jungle. Arbulaster set his men to work to assess the most likely drop-sites. He had no intention of landing on the coast and spending weeks, more likely months, trekking inland. He would drop in, as close as was safe, and have the whole matter concluded in days.
Alongside the officers, there were new men to integrate into the regiment: two full companies of infantry under Captains Tyrwhitt and Wymondham, a few more of Mulberry’s beards and, to Arbulaster’s particular satisfaction, Captain Ledbetter’s horse dragoons.
Arbulaster had been a horseman himself in the Brimlock planetary militia before the crusade was called and he was commissioned as a major in the armoured fist companies of the 282nd. He was not, despite appearances, one of those befuddled backward commanders that Brimlock occasionally produced who were convinced of the ultimate battlefield supremacy of the man on horseback. Ledbetter’s horsemen would be useless in the jungles around the rok’s crash-site, but afterwards, once the rok was taken, they would be indispensable.
Arbulaster sat at the heart of the whirlwind of planning and preparation, making quick yet confident decisions, with the assurance of great experience. He found that old feeling of the excitement and anticipation of a new campaign buzzing within his bones, and then he realised that it was for the last time. And then, despite his frenzy of activity, there was one, even older feeling that he had thought he had long overcome and yet now could not shake: fear.
One could not be afraid of one’s death in the service of the Guard. Your chances of survival were too far beyond your control. One only had to step into the wrong drop-pod, the wrong transport, the wrong piece of ground. One could not do that for twenty years and fear for one’s life each time, not and keep your mind together. But now this was the last. Now he could see how close he was. Now he realised the value his life could have if he could survive it all just one more time. He was marching into battle: some men would die, one of them would be the last. He could not let it be him.
Finally, five days after the Brydon had entered the edge of the system, it reached orbit and the 11th began their deployment. Despite all their preparation, the orks and their rok would have to wait a few days more. The 11th were not descending on them. They were descending on the governor.
Chapter Four
Voor – 660.M41 – Year 21 of the Ellinor Crusade, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 1
The Brimlock 11th paraded in a precise column through the dusty main street of the capital, Voorheid. Arbulaster had ordered the column with a great deal of care so as to make the most impact on the rag-tag inhabitants of the capital. At the fore came the regiment’s company of horse dragoons, the self-ordained elite of the Brimlock regiments, resplendent in their ceremonial armour. Behind them came the infantry, nearly eight hundred men marching in step with lasguns shouldered and fierce expressions on their faces. And then, the
finale, the regiment’s vehicles: the Chimeras which bore the infantry to battle, the Griffons with the gaping maws of their heavy mortars, and then the mighty Leman Russ battle tanks of the armoured company, which could grind the entire city beneath their tracks.
At the very head of the column were the regiment’s colours: a single banner portraying the image of Brimlock’s patron saint, Saint Marguerite, crested by the double-headed Imperial eagle and, on each side of her, stylised images of the ornate rifles for which Brimlock was renowned. In battle the colours were kept carefully sheathed until the critical moment when they might be unfurled to inspire the men to victory; on occasions such as this they were displayed by one of the horse dragoons, guarded on either side by the four colour-sergeants of the regiment, and at the head of those was Arbulaster himself.
Not all was quite how he might have wished, of course. The horse dragoons who had originally been mounted upon magnificent greys, through replacements and generations of breeding, were now a patchwork of different colours. At least, however, the horses still ran, which was more than could be said for many of the regiment’s vehicles. The armoured company were the remains of the 920th Armoured, which had been folded into the 11th after Azzabar. They were a hodge-podge of different models and classes, all requiring constant maintenance from their crews and the regiment’s tech-priest.
The transport Chimeras were in an even worse state, having been cannibalised to keep the tanks of the armoured company functioning. At the beginning of the crusade, the regiment had been equipped with enough Chimeras to carry every man as a dragoon regiment should. The men, however, lasted longer than the machines and so now there were barely enough to carry two of the ten infantry companies.
As for the men themselves, while they all appeared to wear the classic uniform of the Brimlock regiments, twenty years of repair and replacement had left every man with slight variations, whether in pattern or material or colour. The differences even extended to their insignia, as the stubborn veterans of the other regiments that had merged into the 11th kept something of their original regimental markings, merely shifting them to make room for the new. Simply by examining the uniforms alone one could trace back the hundred or more regiments which had now merged into one. Arbulaster understood the men’s recalcitrance; he himself had been loath to give up the insignia of the 282nd even after its losses on Mespots had led to its dissolution.
The trained eye, then, would have identified the many signs of wear upon the 11th, but the trained eye would also have recognised what else those signs indicated: that these men were survivors and killers in equal measure.
The people for whom Arbulaster had arranged the procession, however, were far from trained. The ragged occupants of what laughably passed for Voor’s capital city watched from the side of the street and the windows of the squat buildings. Their clothes and their skin were marked with dirt. Even though the Guard had come at their invitation to rid them of a foe that threatened their lives, their mood was quiet, their eyes hidden by the shadows cast beneath their wide-brimmed hats.
None of them cheered. None of them doffed their hats. None of them even called out in praise of the Emperor. Arbulaster had taken the effort to make the procession appear more as a parade than an invasion and had had Captain Drum play a triumphal hymn over the vox-casters on his tank, but it made little difference to the sombre expressions of the crowd. They simply stared.
Arbulaster knew what these people were and he knew what they were thinking. They were not pioneers, they were escapees: men and women who had thought to flee the strictures and the duties of citizens of the Imperium by running to this virgin world, leaving all the institutions they loathed behind.
For a hundred years or so they had been allowed their liberty. Now, they thought, here the Imperium was finally coming after them. First the Guard, then the Administratum with its tithes, and then the Ecclesiarchy with its witch-hunts. And then what would follow after? No matter what Arbulaster did, the colonists of Voor would always resent him and his troops, and so he had organised this display of strength. Let them resent him if they must, but they would fear him too.
Arbulaster glanced over to where the governor was watching them. She would know that this was not simply a procession; she would know that Arbulaster had called her colonists here so that they might meet their new masters.
Voorheid, Brimlock landing area, Voor pacification Stage 1 Day 2
‘I hear your colonel near got his arse bit off by the governor’s pets yesterday.’
Carson turned from watching the Valkyries landing and taking off around him to the Voorjer scout beside him.
‘I didn’t hear that,’ Carson lied. He had heard it; everyone in the regiment had heard of the altercation between Arbulaster and the governor in their private discussions. Apparently, Arbulaster at one point had cause to raise his voice and had inadvertently awoken the governor’s pair of leathertooths which had been asleep beneath her desk.
Carson did not know if the colonel had actually been injured, but he understood that his exit from the interview had been extremely swift.
‘I hear Sarel and Hendril still got bits of his breeches between their teeth,’ the scout carried on, highly amused. Her pronunciation of Low Gothic was harshened by her clipped and guttural Frisian accent
Carson left the scout’s jibing alone. Her name was Van Am and she was one of the Voorjers who had been living on the Tswaing continent before the rok’s crash, now assigned to help guide the 11th through the terrain and lead them to the orks. She was young, not particularly pretty, but with an attractive youthful vigour about her, and at present she was extremely nervous.
She tried to hide it behind an aggressive, no-nonsense demeanour, but in doing so she made her anxiety all the more obvious. Obvious to Carson at least. He doubted that the rest of the 11th’s pathfinder detachment had even acknowledged her existence.
The pathfinder detachment consisted of Mulberry, his bearded sappers and, as far as Carson could discern, enough plans and print-outs to paper the hull of a battleship. They were still poring over terrain maps and arguing over the best place to site the regiment’s operational base, even though in a few hours’ time they would be there to see them in person.
Carson was there to protect them in case they needed to descend to the jungle floor. Major Brooce had told him he had been assigned because the colonel had particular faith in him. Carson suspected it was more likely that no senior officer had been willing to be cooped up with the ‘beards’ for most of the day.
With the pathfinders wrapped up in their own disputes, and with their Valkyrie pilot delayed, it left conversation between him and Van Am regretfully inevitable. Regretful because, as Carson was perhaps the first representative of the galaxy-spanning regime known as the Imperium of Man she had ever personally encountered, she appeared determined to convince him of the many betrayals of her people by that same Imperium.
‘Don’t take it personally, lieutenant,’ she concluded. ‘I didn’t trust you before I met you. I thought it was a mistake inviting you in the first place. We should have dealt with it all ourselves.’
‘Do you really think you would have been able to?’
Van Am gave a short snort of irritation. ‘That’s just what I expected from your kind. You can’t conceive that anyone could take care of themselves without being in the grip of the Imperium, without the high and mighty Guard to rush and protect them, without your witch hunters and your judges burning out the innocent along with the guilty, without your priests preaching blind devotion to your dead Emperor. You think we’re soft? Have you any idea what we’ve been through here? What we’ve had to struggle through and survive? How many we’ve lost just to make this our home? Of course you don’t.’
Mercifully at that moment Carson saw their pilot, Zdzisław, approach and Van Am went quiet.
‘Commander!’ Carson called to him. ‘How are you t
oday?’
‘It’s a beautiful morning, lieutenant.’ The mechanical Zdzisław stood at attention and snapped off a crisp salute. His chin was freshly shaved, his ashen hair was neatly combed and his right eye still twinkled blue, and that was perhaps all that was left of the original man. Everything else had been constructed afterwards. The rest of his face, his arms, his legs were metal; Navy bionics in the critical places, hand-welded plates and gears in the rest. They were his legacy of twenty years secondment to the Brimlock 11th.
Carson caught the look of restrained horror on Van Am’s face out of the corner of his eye. ‘Are you all set?’ he inquired.
‘We’ve the party plan already; shouldn’t take more than a few hours once we get the old bird in the air.’ Zdzisław’s natural voice had been lost during the raid on Kaswan Bay and instead his words emanated in a toneless electronic dirge from a vox-box fitted in his throat. What made it all the more eerie was that Zdzisław, to appear more human, had managed to wire his metal jaw to move, but could not synchronise it with the words. It flapped randomly as he spoke, as though he were a puppet laughing madly at its own joke.
‘You know about the aerial disturbance around the crash-site?’ The rok itself was still generating an interference field which stretched out for kilometres around it, preventing any flyers from coming close.
‘The governor’s office has given me what they have. They don’t have much, but our path should be safe.’
‘Excellent,’ Carson replied and finally turned to the Voorjer woman who was still gaping horribly at this man who had been so violently disassembled and so painstakingly put back together. ‘Holder Van Amersfoort, this is our pilot, Squadron Commander Zdzisław.’
Zdzisław politely held out the metal bones of his hand. ‘Good morning, ma’am.’
Van Am had enough sense about her to take hold of the cold grip and shake it. Her movements were as mechanical as the pilot’s.
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